A new Digimon Story game is in development apart from Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Hacker’s Memory, according to Hacker’s Memory producer Kazumasa Habu. 4gamer conducted an interview with him recently, which revealed this fact, and a bit more about the future of the Cyber Sleuth sub-series.
4gamer: While we have had an engaging talk about the past, let’s change the topic to Hacker’s Memory. Can you describe the process behind the making of the game?
Kazumasa Habu, producer: Thanks to the consumers Cyber Sleuth was a success, and talk came up about making a new Digimon Story game. On that point, for the next game one of the targets was to account for overseas fans and markets as well.
4gamer: I see, so Cyber Sleuth received quite good reviews overseas too.
Habu: While we received great reviews within Japan, we also received favorable reviews overseas as well, so we will expand the series with a worldwide view from now on. However, the PS4 has become the main hardware overseas, while the PS Vita has barely any retail space. That is why we chose to port Cyber Sleuth to PS4 for the physical version.
4gamer: True, Digimon World –next 0rder-, which was also brought overseas, was also ported from the PS Vita to PS4.
Habu: That’s right. Accordingly, the next game will be made on PlayStation 4 hardware natively. However, that means we not only have to remake the engine for PS4, but also have to refresh and redo the graphics. To do all this from the very beginning would take 3-4 years, which would be quite a long gap from Cyber Sleuth.
We think that ‘maintaining fan enthusiasm’ is very important to the Digimon IP. To do this, Digimon content is provided on a regular basis.
On this point, while the new Digimon Story game is in the works, to keep fanning the flames of enthusiasm we thought that with Hacker’s Memory we could provide another angle to the story of Cyber Sleuth.
4gamer: So there is a different Digimon Story project in the works apart from Cyber Sleuth. That is quite surprising.
Habu: Hacker’s Memory is being promoted officially not as ‘a new game in the Digimon Story series’, but rather a new ‘Cyber Sleuth series’ game, which is intentional. Part of it comes from my feelings of wanting to provide a solid game for fans who enjoyed the previous game as well.
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Hacker’s Memory will come to the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita in Japan on December 14, 2017. It will come to the PlayStation 4 in the Americas and Europe on January 19, 2018.
